A little bit of hip-hop history may have been confirmed by DJ Booth today, and originally uncovered thanks author John Seabrook and his recent book, The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. In an excerpt from the book, which was first posted by Genius, Seabrook wrote that Drake worked as a songwriter for Dr. Dre in Los Angeles for Death Row Records. Seeing that Dre left Suge Knight's Death Row label in 1996, that didn't really make sense since Drake was only 10 years old at the time.
DJ Booth reached out to Seabrook about it, and he clarified that Drake told him he was 19 when he was in Los Angeles working with Dre. This would then place the timeframe around 2005, way before Drizzy had blown up in the rap game and while Dre was still working on an album that was then known as Detox. Drake is even quoted in the book, which proves all of this did indeed happen, but that it just wasn't with Death Row Records. "It was some of the most strenuous militant shit I’ve ever done. But no useable songs came out of it," Drake told Seabrook. "When I think of how he worked us, it’s no wonder he didn’t get anything out of it. It was just writers in a room churning out product all day long.”
Of course, on Drake and Lil Wayne's 2009 song "Ransom," Wayne famously rapped, "And me and Drizzy both wrote on Detox." So in a sense, we always knew this, but we never knew when. That's the beauty of hip-hop, you're always learning something new. You can pick up a copy of Seabrook's new book here.
